David B. Ottaway received a BA from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1962 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1972. He worked 35 years for The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe and later as a national security and investigative reporter in Washington before retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards for his reporting at home and abroad and was twice nominated a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ottaway was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1979-80 and again in 2005-06 and is currently a Senior Scholar. His most recent book, published in November 2008, was The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America’s Tangled Relationship with Saudi Arabia. He is currently working on a book regarding the changes underway in the Arab world.

Algeria: the Politics of a Socialist Revolution, coauthor with Marina Ottaway (University of California Press, 1970)

Previous Terms at the Wilson Center:

Fellow, 2006-2007
"A Reporter's Postcards: Revisiting Six Global Hot Spots That Changed History's Course"
I am returning to six countries where I lived or covered major stories, from Algeria at independence in 1962, to the Bosnian civil war in 1992-94. I witnessed Anwar Sadat's assassination in Egypt; the fall of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia; Nelson Mandela's walk to freedom; one million French people fleeing Algeria at independence, and the last Portuguese government ship departing Luanda at Angola's bloody independence.

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Tunisia’s transition to democracy, widely regarded as the most successful to emerge from the five uprisings that shook the Arab world in 2011, is being seriously threatened by violence in the wake of a prominent leftist politician’s assassination in early February. The killing of Chokri Belaid has not only triggered a showdown within the ruling Islamic Ennahda Party between its moderate and fundamentalist wings but also deepened the hostility between secularists and Islamists within Tunisian society. more

Arab academics and activists call the uprisings that started in early 2011 across the Arab world “revolutions.” Yet the “Arab Revolution” is both similar and dissimilar to the French, Russian, and other great revolutions that molded the history of the Western world, as described by Crane Brinton in his classic, The Anatomy of Revolution. more

Since Tuareg nationalists and al-Qaeda seized control of northern Mali in February 2012, the world has been dithering about what to do. Neither the United States nor Algeria, two potentially key actors in the unfolding drama, has decided on its role yet. Mali’s neighbors, the African Union, and the UN Security Council have not wanted to take any risky action and have found ways to put off a military response in the slim hope of finding a political solution. more

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Ottaway, who has just visited Cairo, writes about the future U.S.-Egyptian relationship in light of the current political drift between the two countries and Egypt’s ongoing economic crisis. Egypt’s current attempt to secure a $4.8 billion IMF loan requiring potential subsidy cuts to gasoline and cooking oil serve to complicate matters as ensuing price rises could trigger riots and provoke Egyptians to blame the United States. more

Egyptian President Morsi's debut on the world stage was anything but tentative. He began by challenging the world to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and addressed the ongoing civil war in Syria, calling it the "tragedy of the age." To gain perspective on the highly-anticipated speech from Egypt's first democratically elected leader, we spoke with former Washington Post Cairo Bureau Chief, David Ottaway, on the eve of his latest trip to Egypt. more

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When it comes to falling oil prices, good news at the pump could be very bad news when it comes to geopolitics. Many oil exporting nations could be facing fiscal and political calamity if prices were to drop and remain at levels lower than $100 per barrel. A panel of topic and regional experts discussed the situation during a recent Wilson Center event. That’s the focus of this edition of REWIND.

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"U.S. officials must make clear to the Egyptian military and its supporters, as well as to Islamists, that Washington will choose its friends, and that they do not include regimes that curb popular participation at the polls in favor of street mobilization," writes Marina and David Ottaway in The Washington Post.

Widespread and intense protests in Egypt raise serious questions about the stability and future of President Mohamed Morsi’s government. David Ottaway talks about the current crisis and its implications for future democratic reforms.

Egyptian President Morsi's debut on the world stage was anything but tentative. He began by challenging the world to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and addressed the ongoing civil war in Syria, calling it the "tragedy of the age." To gain perspective on the highly-anticipated speech from Egypt's first democratically elected leader, we spoke with former Washington Post Cairo Bureau Chief, David Ottaway, on the eve of his latest trip to Egypt.

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Over the past year, Islamists have triggered tectonic shake-ups across the Middle East. Borders have been redefined. Tactics have turned bloodier. States are unraveling under the pressure. Moderate Islamists are being sidelined as militants alter the region more than any trend since modern states became independent. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt’s Sinai are flashpoints, but no country is exempt. The impact has rippled worldwide, evident in the Charlie Hebdo attack.

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In the wake of President Obama’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, please join us for this conference call as three veteran observers and analysts of the Saudi and Washington scenes assess the state of relations between the two countries and prospects for the future.

President Obama's mission in visiting Saudi Arabia at the end of March is to reassure King Abdullah of America's commitment to the Saudi kingdom. But with so many uncertainties in ongoing U.S. negotiations with Iran, Israel, and the Palestinians and serious differences between the two over the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, the question is will President Obama succeed?

Arab academics and activists call the uprisings that started in early 2011 across the Arab world “revolutions.” Yet the “Arab Revolution” is both similar and dissimilar to the French, Russian, and other great revolutions that molded the history of the Western world, as described by Crane Brinton in his classic, The Anatomy of Revolution.

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Saudi Arabia has reacted to the attempt by Houthi Shi’ite rebels in Yemen to take over the entire country with Iranian backing by forming for the first time a pan-Arab Sunni military alliance against the Houthis. The Arab coalition has begun raining bombs down on Houthi positions across Yemen, and Saudi Arabia has amassed 150,000 troops along the Yemeni border. Now the Saudis and its Arab partners must decide whether and when to put “boots on the ground” in a belated attempt to stop the Houthi takeover.

The Islamic terrorist attack on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis may have serious ramifications on the fragile moderate center of Tunisian politics. An entente between Islamists and secularists that produced the Arab Spring’s only successful transition to democracy is already shaky. Tunisia has also produced the Arab world’s largest number of jihadis for the Islamic cause in Syria and Iraq, challenging the assumption that democracy is the best antidote for stemming the rise of Islamic extremism.

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King Abdullah, who died January 23 after a 10-year-long reign, was truly beloved by his people and the most highly respected leader of the Arab world. He started out as a reformer, propelling women into the all-male world of Saudi politics and sending over 100,000 Saudis abroad for higher education in hopes of speeding up the modernization of his ultra-conservative kingdom. But the Arab Spring brought an abrupt halt to the reform process and triggered a severe crackdown on all human and political rights activists.

After three years of constant discord, relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have taken a definite turn for the better as they team up to lead a coalition of Arab and Western nations in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But the two old partners have different goals and immediate concerns that could come to test once again their long-time tangled relationship.

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The failure of Tunisia's ruling Islamic Ennahda movement to convince secular parties and civil society groups that it is truly committed to the separation of religion and state underlies the current political crisis there. Ennahda's moderate leadership has made repeated compromises on religious issues to meet secularist demands for a new constitution. But it has lost their trust by showing too much deference to its own militant Islamic wing and fundamentalist Salafis outside the movement.

The opening of a dialogue between the United States and Iran has stirred deep-seated fears in Saudi Arabia that the Obama administration may be headed for a “grand bargain” with Tehran at the Saudis’ expense, raising further doubts about Saudi dependence on Washington for its security. The Saudis have already sensed flagging U.S. support in their confrontation with Iran over Iraq and Syria as they wage a bitter battle with the Iranians for Arab and Muslim world leadership.

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We once again convene our Middle East roundtable with a look at the recent Iranian election results and what the outcome could mean for the U.S. relationship with the Islamic Republic. Joining us are Haleh Esfandiari, David Ottaway and Afshin Molavi.

With the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt protests have quickly spread throughout the Middle East. With many former regional allies of the United States now on the brink of revolution, what are the implications for the U.S. and other western allies after Mubarak's fall? Three of the most experienced experts on the region, David Ottaway, Aaron David Miller, and Barbara Slavin share their insight.